Ann Cleeves - Dead Water

It was a still night and he heard their car stop at the bottom of the bank. He took a deep breath and had the door open to welcome them by the time they’d walked up the path. It was almost dark now and he could only see them as silhouettes, Willow taller than the Whalsay man. On the hill at the back of the house there were sheep like small white ghosts in the gloom. And in Perez’s head more ghosts: of the woman who had allowed him to share this place with her, and of two dead men. Markham and Henderson. Like the women who had loved them, as different as it was possible to be.

The detectives followed Perez quietly into the house, not wanting to wake the child sleeping in the next room. They ate like old friends. No need for conversation at first. Perez hoped that meant the awkwardness between him and Willow was forgotten. Later, when he had made coffee and brought out the cake, they talked through the investigation.

‘So do we really believe in Markham’s conversion?’ Willow said. ‘Can people change like that? Suddenly. A clap of thunder. Saul on the road to Damascus.’

‘I can kind of believe it.’ Perez felt warm and easy and wondered if that was some sort of betrayal, here in Fran’s house. The idea of betrayal had become central to the investigation. Betrayal and transformation. But Fran had loved parties, people eating and drinking and talking, so he decided he could enjoy the conversation in tribute to her. ‘In this case at least. Markham had a stressful job. Not many friends, from what we can gather. A small rented flat on his own in the big city. Homesick, maybe, though he’d never have admitted it. He was successful enough, but it must have been hard being a small fish in a big pool. Here in Shetland he was a star reporter, and everyone knows the Markhams of Ravenswick Hotel.’ Perez paused for a moment and collected his thoughts. ‘Jerry might have been quite low, don’t you think, alone in London? That was the impression his editor gave. So he went into that church one lunchtime. Just to shelter from the rain, as Annabel said. Or in search of something. And he found friendship. A welcome. A way of belonging. To the church, but also to the Grey family. They even invited him home for Christmas’

‘And he found a beautiful woman,’ Willow said. ‘Don’t forget that. We know how Markham liked the ladies. Especially if they were young.’

‘And money.’ This was Sandy, joining in too. ‘A flash house in London. He was always impressed by stuff like that. Class.’

‘So perhaps he wanted to believe.’ Perez hoped he was making sense. He felt he was groping towards some sort of answer. ‘Perhaps he wanted the whole conversion experience. To please Annabel and the rest of them. To become the centre of attention again.’

‘Then why did he come back to Shetland?’ Willow was sitting on the floor, though there were chairs enough for the three of them. She was stretched on a couple of sheepskins in front of the fire and her face was red with the heat. She’d taken off her sweater and was wearing a striped T-shirt, frayed at the neck. ‘Why did he run away from his new girlfriend and all his new friends and bring himself back here?’

‘To tell his parents that he was going to be married?’ Perez remembered Maria’s insistence that Jerry had something important to tell her. ‘But not just that. He’d have told them straight away, if that was the sole reason for the visit.’

‘Could it be that he was here to write a story, like he told everyone?’ Sandy had been following the conversation, frowning with concentration. ‘When he was working on the Shetland Times perhaps he’d come across something in the islands that wasn’t right. I don’t know – corruption. People on the fiddle. And this was his chance to prove to his new friends that he was a good man. A good Christian.’

‘Or perhaps the conversion thing was all bollocks,’ Willow said. ‘He went along with it to get inside Annabel’s knickers. And he was here to make a bit of money to impress his new woman. Perhaps the blackmail theory still holds.’

There was a silence. Perez got to his feet to pour more coffee. He had ideas about the case – he always believed more in the personal than the political – but it was Willow’s place to move the investigation forward. In the end she threw the responsibility back to him.

‘What do you think, Jimmy? Where do we go next?’

‘I’d like to talk to Evie again,’ he said. ‘If Markham’s change of heart was genuine, then Evie would be the person he’d feel the need to meet. He’d want her forgiveness, wouldn’t he? He’d want to set things straight between them, before going back to start his new life with Annabel Grey.’ Perez drained his mug and ran again in his head the conversations he’d had with Evie Watt. ‘She told me Markham had tried to phone her, but she claims that she hadn’t met him. Perhaps we need to check that. Evie looks young, right enough, but perhaps Sue Walsh was mistaken, and Evie was the woman Markham met at the Bonhoga.’

‘So that’s your plan for tomorrow, Jimmy?’

He wondered at Willow’s change of tone. One day yelling at him for doing his own thing. Now giving him a free hand. ‘Aye, if there’s nothing else you want me to do. It’ll mean a trip back to Fetlar, to her parents’ place.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Willow said. ‘A day-trip to an off-island. If that’s OK with you, Jimmy, of course.’ Her voice was mocking now, with some of its old edge. ‘And we should fit in a visit to Captain Sinclair, the harbour master, too.’

Then Perez’s anxiety returned, eating away at the new confidence. Maybe she didn’t trust him to do his work on his own. Maybe she’d been told that he wasn’t fit to be let out without a minder.

He was about to answer when there was a cry from the bedroom: ‘Jimmy! Jimmy!’ It was Cassie’s voice, confused and panicky.

He was on his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to go. Will you see yourselves out?’ He didn’t care that this might sound rude. He’d already forgotten all about the case. When he got to the girl’s room she was sitting upright.

‘I was having a dream,’ she said. ‘A terrible dream.’ He saw that she’d wet the bed, and he helped her out and cleaned her and changed the sheets. He sat by her, stroking her hair away from her face until she slept. He thought he would do anything in the world to make her happy.

The next day was still and clear, and the drive to Toft for the Yell ferry had the feel of a holiday day out. He’d picked Willow up at the police station after dropping Cassie at school, and she fed back to him the overnight news as he drove north.

‘Vicki Hewitt thinks she’ll wrap up her work at Hvidahus today.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘Henderson’s killer was careful. No footwear prints in the garage. Loads of fingerprints of course. Mostly the ones you’d expect. Evie’s naturally. Everything in the kitchen clean.’

‘So nothing useful.’ Perez turned and smiled at her and wondered why it mattered what she thought of him.

The lad taking their money on the ferry to Yell had been at school with Perez and chatted to him through the open car window all the way across. News of other school friends. Weddings and babies. He’d never been the most tactful of men. ‘And who’s this?’ Nodding towards Willow, a great smirk on his face, as if she couldn’t hear him.

‘Ah,’ Perez said. ‘This is my boss.’

Then the drive across the length of Yell, bare hillsides scarred with black peat banks. Yell had its bonny places, but you couldn’t see them from the road north. On the crossing to Fetlar they got out of the car and watched the island approaching. The noise of the engine meant they wouldn’t be overheard.